I haven't posted in a while as I've been quite busy...
In late July I joined beloved UK studio Travellers Tales, which is a wonderul endeavour for me as I was quite the fan of their games on the Sega Megadrive back when their logo was the one on the left above this text here! (Their current logo is on the right)
So far it's been a whirlwind of moving 200 miles, learning new ways to use my skills, and meeting wonderful people to work with. I'm looking forward to many more interesting tales to tell from Manchester!

DM-DeathFan was and still is one of my favourite Unreal Tournament maps, dating back to 1999 when it was created by Elliot 'Myscha' Cannon for Unreal.

When considering how I could contribute to the new Unreal Tournament, reimagining a classic map like DM-DeathFan was definitely my first thought.

As you can see from the above video, DM-DeathFan is a tight deathmatch map, where there is not much room to dodge and less room for mistakes.
The map consists of a large tunnel rising from a pit of slime with a spinning fan at the bottom, the players fight suspended over the deadly fan on two layers of platforms.
As this was my first experience working on Unreal Tournament's editor, I spent a day getting familiar with BSP, and blocking out the basic shapes of the level.
Following that, I created the centrepiece of the map, the death fan as seen in the gif above, and the large columns that hold up the octagonal platforms.

Considering the lighting from the skylight, and the semi-transparent platforms in the middle of the level, I focused the design of the lighting to the extremities of the level, allowing light to bleed around corners and platforms just enough for players to navigate, but mostly I wanted to keep the green glow from the slime seen in the original level.
Creating the top platform, wanted the flow of the level to lead players down towards the UDamage, so the holes get larger towards the bottom of the level similar to the original, guiding the player, and the platforms are transparent so that players can always see the state of the UDamage.

Jump-pads replace elevators in the original, allowing for faster-paced gameplay in such a small environment, the top now features 2 weapon placements of a shock rifle and a sniper rifle for players who find their way onto the support beams
Now that the level is in a playable state, I'm currently iterating on the design before going back over the basic shapes to make pretty static mesh replacements for the BSP brushes. I've learnt a lot about Unreal Engine 4's editor, and blueprint systems.
Here's a quick video of some terrible gameplay from me getting out-manouvred by bots on my map.
I'm looking forward to getting feedback on the level and applying it to the overall design. :)

Experimenting with an interesting idea, I'm sure if you owned a Nintendo Gameboy at a young age , you struggled with playing a game in the back of a moving car at night, with only streetlights to guide you!

I decided to mock something up in Unity and try and recreate that feeling , to see if any interesting game ideas can come out of that.
Initial testing shows that you can really set the mood quite easily, but working on something that uniquely works around that is the hard part.

I'm going to tinker with this idea further and see if theres a game in it.